


bullet stains

by itsallanoxymoron



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Red Room, this was super fun to write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallanoxymoron/pseuds/itsallanoxymoron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Volchitsa, he says, how proud I am of you.</p><p>Everyone who survives the Red Room survives the split.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the beast of the thing

**Author's Note:**

> so i kind of took some liberties with Natasha's backstory because nothing was very clear to me when i was doing research; it all varied
> 
>  
> 
> also, Natalia Alianovna Romanova is the name I found on the wiki page as being her "original" name so that's what I used

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They call her death and destruction and chyerti and grin when her hands are stained red and Alexei changes his color to match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote at the beginning is from The Golden Compass.
> 
> mily—darling (masculine)  
> volchitsa—she-wolf (feminine)  
> chyerti—demons, devils  
> Chyornaya Vdova—Black Widow

_Why do dæmons have to settle? I want [my dæmon] to be able to change forever._

•

They return him to her after two years.

She has counted the seconds, the minutes, the hours. She has felt their bond grow weak as Alexei was ripped from her. She has heard his cries for her, as he has heard hers. Eventually, they stopped crying. For two years they have had weakness trained out of them. For two years they have been separated. But no longer.

“Volchitsa,” Alexei says when he returns to her in the form of a white Bengal tiger (this shows how removed they are from one another—Natalia has never seen this form before), “how proud I am of you.” She bends down and leans her forehead to his. He is warm and alive; his presence feels right. How alien it is to be whole again. “Ivan Petrovitch is pleased to know that we have completed our individual training.”

The name of her mentor and surrogate father gives Natalia Alianovna pause, and she pulls back from their embrace. “You've spoken with him?”

Alexei nods and changes into something more comfortable: a German Shepard. She cannot remember what his favorite form was before. Before Ivan Petrovitch took her in, there was nothing—she was nothing. She was nameless, an orphan, lost and confused. Now she—they—have purpose.

Natalia Alianovna looks down at her dæmon. He wags his tail and looks at her. Suddenly she remembers that she cannot hear Alexei in her mind, and she is so angry. There is an empty space where her soul once was. Their bond was strong, as all people's bonds with their familiars are strong. Now there is no bond at all.

“We are happy to serve the Motherland, mily,” she tells him, “but we will destroy whoever has separated us.”

Alexei agrees, turns into a grey wolf, howls.

•

Their first mission is a success. They kill a man and do not flinch.

“He had a family, Natashenka,” Alexei says afterwards.

“So did we,” Natalia Alianovna answers.

•

The first person to touch her familiar after they are reunited gets a knife in his own for his troubles. His dæmon explodes in a cloud of golden Dust, and she does not feel sorry.

“No one shall touch you,” she tells her Alexei, “ever again.” People have taken something sacred from her, by touching him.

She assumes that she will be reprimanded severely, will lose meal privileges or perhaps worse. Natalia Alianovna has received punishments for lesser offenses; no doubt she will be held accountable for the man's death. This, however, is not the case.

“Natasha Romanova,” people say, “you are our first and greatest success. You are our triumph, our pride and glory. You shall bring greatness to the Motherland, and all our comrades shall rejoice.”

They reward her with serums and technology and training. They call her death and destruction and chyerti and grin when her hands are stained red and Alexei changes his color to match. She is still parted from him sometimes, but less often now that she has lashed out. The second stage of their so-called preparation has begun.

At first, she and Alexei were severed and trained separately. Natalia Alianovna does not know what sort of education her dæmon received, for he never speaks of it and she does not ask. She does not think she wishes to know. Natalia herself has sparred, broken bones, learned to use her body to her advantage. This is why her familiar was taken from her.

After all, how can a weapon be successful when her soul can only be a foot away from her body? How can a spy complete a mission when her dæmon gives away what she is?

(Other countries think familiars to be a weakness. They have tried to destroy them and leave their humans intact. They believe warriors should not have dæmons, that by its very nature to have a dæmon is to be weak. Russia breeds spies in place of super soldiers, and know this is not the case.)

Alexei was taken from her. She was fragile, at first, but Natalia Alianovna has since learned how to be tenacious without him.

Together, with Alexei, she is learning to grow stronger. This new phase of their training includes working with and without one another. They are being rebuilt, and are more powerful together than they ever could have been separated.

They are instructed to seduce, to be coy and smile prettily at boys, at girls, at men who leer. Alexei is told to change based on new identities, new covers they are given. The names blend together at times, but they remember each and every one—and underneath it all, they are still the same.

They pass the rest of their examinations—as their instructors insist on calling them—with flying colors. “Natashenka Romanova,” a woman tells her (she uses the diminutive, for she feels she has the right, and Natalia does not correct her), “you are the first Chyornaya Vdova. You are the first of your kind, and your name shall go down in history.”

Her graduation from pupil to blackguarded spy is rewarded with vodka, sex, and blood, as these things often are. Alexei takes after Ivan Petrovitch and turns into a Eurasian wolf for the occasion. He is big and broad, with a coat that is grey and white; he would look well against the snow, against the backdrop of a Russian winter.

“Alyosha,” she tells her familiar in wonder, “we have done it. We have completed our training.” She imagines that Ivan Petrovitch will be pleased with them.

Alexei turns into a shrike at her joy. He chirps and rests on her shoulder. Natalia Alianovna drinks and the vodka down her throat tastes like fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexei is a name I picked at random simply because I liked it. (Okay, it may also be because of Anna Karenina.)
> 
> Anyways, I tried very hard to think of a dæmon that would match Natasha but I was like, "There isn't one. She's a spy." So I figured that Natasha would have a dæmon that couldn't settle, because her personality is so changeable, especially in her business. The fact that the Red Room experimented on her was also a good reason for Alexei to be unable to change.


	2. the beast, uncovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her dæmon turns into a raven. “Teach us,” he says, and his eyes are black pits, endless, unyielding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote at the beginning is from The Americans on FX.
> 
> matryoshka doll—Russian nestling doll  
> zabroshennyy—abandoned (in reference to being an orphan  
> kak vas zovut?—what is your name?  
> chto—what

_Don’t tell her you love her so much. A Russian woman doesn’t like that. She won’t respect you._

  
•

  
Turning into a Chyornaya Vdova does not make them free. Not entirely.  
They are sent away on many missions. They do not mind. They will do their part for the USSR, and being a spy is an easy thing; they are one of the best. It is in their blood.  
With all the identities they are being given, Natalia Alianovna feels like a matryoshka doll. There are so many covers wrapped around her that it might take an eternity to unearth who she is underneath. Alexei thinks she’s being dramatic.  
“Tashenka,” he tells her, not unkindly, “we are the same person we have always been.” She tries to find a word that will define them—spy, asset, killer, danger, vixen—and there isn't one. “We cannot be just one thing,” says Alexei, as though reading her mind. (He cannot do this, for they have been split apart. He knows her only by what he can read of her facial expressions; it is not enough.) “We are what we need to be—to survive.”

•

There is a word for what she is.  
People whisper it— _witch_ —when she passes, sometimes, when they think she cannot hear. (Natalia Alianovna hears everything. The scientists in Petrograd made sure of that.) She wonders if what they say is true.  
It is possible that she is a witch by blood, being an orphan, but Alexei doubts it, although they have not entirely ruled out the possibility. It is possible, too, that she has been made a witch by science—and Natasha’s dæmon thinks this to be truer.

He must know things that she doesn’t, but he will not tell. Still, Natalia Alianovna is doubtful, because she does not think mankind can change the marrow of a man, can rewrite genes and make an ordinary person, let alone a zabroshennyy girl, into a witch. (Alexei reminds her that the Motherland has done the impossible—they have split dæmon and human for her, the Black Widow, and for all the Black Widows to come. They have done this, so surely engineering a witch would be an easy thing. This piece of information does not matter to her.)  
Witch. Civilian. Soldier. Spy.  
Natalia Alianovna is none of these things, and all of them, but she is not sure if she would call herself by any of those titles. Some days, she does not even feel human.

  
•

  
The Winter Soldier does not have a dæmon—at least, he does not appear to.  
In spite of this, Natalia Alianovna does not feel uncomfortable around him, although everyone else seems to. Alexei bristles the first time they meet him, being a tabby cat since they had come back from an assignment and flicking his tail distastefully. This discomfort is replaced by awe as her dæmon realizes they are the same in one way. He is an oddity, like her and Alexei. No one likes being around people who are like they are, people whose relationship with their familiars are so different.  
“Kak vas zovut?” he asks her, voice devoid of an accent.  
“Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” she replies. He looks her over, assessing her; surely he must take note of Alexei, who has decided to become a barn owl and perch on her shoulder for his own convenience. “And he is Alexei.”  
“I have read your file.” (He means that he knows her dæmon’s name.)  
“And?”  
“I will train you, and then we will see.”

  
•

  
Natalia Alianovna does not surprise him. She does not even vaguely impress him.

After a particularly stunning move in which she takes down four of her opponents at once, the Asset sighs and stares at a point on her shoulder.  
“Chto?” she snaps, annoyed.  
“They told me you were fast. You can be faster. They told me you were strong. You can be stronger. They told me you were the best; they did not tell me that your left arm is weaker than your right. They did not tell me that you plan only one step ahead—instead of five. They did not tell me you cannot sniff out weakness.” The Winter Soldier stares at her—hard, unflinching. “I am a machine; I do not need to need these things. My strength is in brute force. You are a spy. Your strength is in secrecy, in ingenuity and intelligence. Your body is strong, but your mind—not weak, but not yet deadly, not yet a bullet waiting to fire.”

Natasha’s face is a slab of marble; his words wash over her. She will not be weak. She will become a reckoning.  
Her dæmon turns into a raven. “Teach us,” he says, and his eyes are black pits, endless, unyielding.

  
•

  
He does not remember his own name.  
Alexei is not surprised. “What shall we call you? Something Russian?”  
The Winter Soldier shakes his head.

Natasha studies him; his eyes are glossing over, and his jaw clenches as if he is in great pain. She does not ask if he is alright. “A—American,” he spits out like a curse.  
“James,” offers Alexei in an offhanded way. He has always been perceptive.  
The soldier stiffens. “Yes,” he says, slightly astonished, “call me that. How did you know?”  
Alexei shrugs—a monkey. “We hear things you cannot.” He means dæmons. He means humans. “We know things you do not. And it helps when you are a dæmon on your own; people think you're just a bug. It's far easier than interrogation, at any rate.”  
Natasha stares at him. “You never mentioned that. It would have made some of our missions a lot easier.” She’s teasing, but she is slightly annoyed. It really _would_ have made things easier—her familiar going away while she stayed in a safe house nearby, or even in the vents of the building he would have to penetrate.  
“You never asked, Nata.”

She frowns. James laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this from my phone because I just moved and currently have no internet so sorry if the formatting is weird.
> 
> Anyways, this chapter uses a lot of breaks and there's a lot of small scenes in contrast to the first chapter which had like three breaks and a couple large scenes. I wanted the diction to relay that everything is sort of accelerated, now that Natasha is an official Black Widow who is being deployed and has graduated from her training. 
> 
> And I definitely don't think the Winter Soldier would have a dæmon. She'd have been separated from him by some gross means somehow. He's supposed to be a machine, and it definitely unsettles his victims when they notice he doesn't have a familiar. They're like, “Oh shit. What's going to happen to me? What is he capable of?” Anything. He's capable of literally anything because his moral compass was taken away from him.
> 
> Anyways, that's enough of that.

**Author's Note:**

> diminutives (nicknames)
> 
> Natalia—Natasha, Natashenka, Tashenka, Nata, Tasha  
> Alexei—Alyosha, Lyosha
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong or if there's any others which I may have missed.


End file.
